Migration from sendmail dovecot on Redhat ES4

Here's a basic procedure I was planning to use to migrate from Redhat 4 es sendmail with dovecot to Zimbra Open source....

a Backup to tape...(duh).
1 Backup to disk for useability.
2 Cat /var/spool/mail/$username > /home/$username/mail/old_inbox.
3 Make a tar file of all users /mail folder in their home dirs.
4 Stage new server.
5 Create users.
6 find out where the h&(&* the home dirs are and see if my /home/$username/mail/ files are in the proper format...
7. move and chane permissions of files (mail folders)...
8 Test
9 Deploy
Are there better tools for this?
Anyone do a sililar migration?

Here's a basic procedure I was planning to use to migrate from Redhat 4 es sendmail with dovecot to Zimbra Open source....

...

6 find out where the h&(&* the home dirs are and see if my /home/$username/mail/ files are in the proper format...
7. move and chane permissions of files (mail folders)...

Well, I don't think you'll find that the mail format is similar enough to be able to do things that way. Zimbra stores all of it's email in it's own dir, under /opt/zimbra. It doesn't use the directories of your system accounts -- and in fact Zimbra users don't need to have system accounts.

What I might recommend is this --

Setup your new server, with Zimbra on it. Create the email accounts you want in Zimbra. Then, use a program such as imapsync to pull your email from your existing server over to Zimbra on the new server.

Well, I don't think you'll find that the mail format is similar enough to be able to do things that way. Zimbra stores all of it's email in it's own dir, under /opt/zimbra. It doesn't use the directories of your system accounts -- and in fact Zimbra users don't need to have system accounts.

What I might recommend is this --

Setup your new server, with Zimbra on it. Create the email accounts you want in Zimbra. Then, use a program such as imapsync to pull your email from your existing server over to Zimbra on the new server.

Good luck!
-Eric

I'm going to second this. I went from a courier IMAP/Postfix/ASSP/Squirellmail set up to Zimbra in pretty much the same steps..

1. Install and setup ZCS and add the new host as an MX for your domain in DNS.
2. Create your user accounts and aliases in ZCS as a mirror of accounts in your existing environment
3. Get a secondary MXin the mean time if you want to handle your downtime email (I used a free service I found online to host a secondary. I listed my old server as 10 the free serivce as 15 and the new Zimbra machine as 20)
4. Notify users of downtime and copy your old /etc/shadow file as a backup, then create a new single password for every system account on your old system and put it in the password field for all users. This simplifies having to specify a ton of passwords when using imapsync
5. Use imapsync to sync all of your accounts first disabling you mail services (this is where the secondary MX came in handy as it took a while)
6. Remove your old primary MX record in DNS and make your new machine the primary.
7. Test and verify

YMMV and I may have missed a step or two but this was just for an example. I was able to change over with no issues save one ... I changed an account name and forgot to include a single alias for it ... resolved in about 2 minutes

Other then that, not a missed email and the only thing different was the web interface address which I eventually changed to the old name after I had ZCS running for a few days.

The only thing that "might" suck is recreating all the accounts if you have a LOT.

My final resolve...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++
Here's what I did... Mind you out smaller sister company is only a 15-25 user network....
On out main company (200 or so users) I'll user imapsync...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++

They use mozilla tb.

pre > I added the accounts to the new server with no network installed.
(the existing email server still in 100% operation)

1 I renamed and changed the ip of the sendmail server.
2 networked the new server.
3 I changed the old tb account to sendmails new ip. and renamed it "old server"
4 I added a new account for the new server.
5 Drag and drop folders.
6 delete old account